The Challenge of Career Studies

Audrey Collin

Professor Emeritus ofCareer Studies

Outline of presentation

• my personal perspective• the richness, rigour, and relevance of CS • the relationship between academic and

personal career learning• the Lancaster model of the learning cycle• application of learning to home discipline• some ways forward

Celebrating Career Studies

richness

rigour

relevance

Richness, rigour, and relevance

• theory, research, practice, policy

• degrees of sophistication and detail

• range of interest

• recognition of and responses to change

• emerging issues

Relationship between academic study and personal career learning

• the Lancaster model of the learning cycle

Learner’sschema,

meanings,skills, etc.

Reflection

Discovery

Receptionof input

Feedback

Activity

Conceptualising

Hypothesising

INNER WORLD OUTER WORLD

Based on Binsted, 1980

Application of learningto home discipline

• context

• perspective

• underlying assumptions

• meaning

• language, ideology and rhetoric

Some ways forward

• awareness of whole field – it can be seen as a system – interdependence – synergy – whole greater than the sum of its parts

• need for multidisciplinarity and dialogue between perspectives (see www.careerstudies.net)

• need to develop our critical thinking further (use Lancaster model?), and so increase rigour at all levels, develop relevant new theories, methodologies, and practices

• need to develop effective relationships between theorists, researchers, practitioners, policy-makers (eg encourage practitioners to engage in small-scale research)